Euro-visions Technologies of vision in Until the End of the World

Until the End of the World can be seen as a ‘global' film in terms of its production process, theme, narrative structure and universal appeal. The article challenges this universality by demonstrating that the film mobilises distinctive and definitive European perspectives in its attempt to speculate about our global future. The article initially examines the film's imagining of technological development in the near future. The film is particularly preoccupied with the future of ‘technologies of vision', the techno-scientific and artistic ways through which we represent ourselves and the world around us. In Until the End of the World, these ‘technologies of vision' are contrasted to more traditional processes of story-telling. The position that narrative occupies in the film is analysed with particular emphasis on the position and the function ascribed to the narrator. The article locates both the discursive origins of ‘technologies of vision' and the film's critique of them, not in opposing universes, but within the same historical process, sharing a common ‘destiny' and coming from the same (European) view of the world.     

Domestic futures and sustainable residential development

Domestic ‘futures’ have been a long time coming. This paper questions the extent to which futuristic ‘vision’ linked to the rhetoric and sentiment of ‘sustainable development’ and the ‘livable city’ inform town and regional planning in England and Canada. Despite official commitment to ‘environmental’ objectives and media interest in ‘ecotech’ residential development, markets institutions and behaviour lag behind what is technically possible. Planning guidance encourages homes with less environmental impact. But this message has not reached most residential consumers. Is lack of mass markets in low impact housing a flaw in Government regulation, evidence of the cynical nature of official rhetoric, or proof of gradual product development as society redefines what is expected of living spaces? Or is it unwise to expect too much change in attitudes to property, or for innovation to come soon?     

‘Obedience’ in the classroom

The second general standard of the AICPA states “In all matters relating to the assignment, an independence in mental attitude is to be maintained by the auditor or auditors.” Despite assertions that the ultimate responsibility of independence rests with the individual auditor, emphasis is typically placed on the AICPA's code of ethics in the auditing classroom. But, does such an approach reflect and accentuate the ultimate moral responsibility of the individual? The purpose of this paper is to discuss the use of Milgram's film “Obedience,” which portrays a psychological experiment on response to authority, as a means of dramatizing the subtle nature of “mental independence” to auditing students.The paper describes the use of this film in auditing instruction and the corresponding response of students. Recommendations for effective administration of the film are offered.     

Forecasting our environmental future

This series now comes to an appropriate end with the most menacing set of question marks ever raised about the future of the human race. During the past two decades—from the inauguration of the Club of Rome in 1967 to Margaret Thatcher's famous ‘green’ speech to the Royal Society in 1988—an ever growing volume of research has erased the old-time notion that we live out our lives in a steady-state world. As the bad news has spread—environmental pollution, acid rain, the warming of the oceans—a consensus of anxieties has found expression in a global fear for the future. Is there anyone who would gainsay the possibility that, as Mrs Thatcher put it, ‘with all these enormous changes—population, agriculture, use of fossil fuels—concentrated into such a short period of time, we have unwittingly begun a massive experiment with the system of the planet itself’? The scale of these changes and the measure of the dangers they bring—these provide the range of cause and effect in Dr Woodell's reflections on the great harm we have done to the human environment. This is the one occasion when an editor can truly say: Read on for the survival of our species.     

The first WFSF Asia—Pacific course: the futures of development

Is development theory dead? It seems to be, if the thinking of some young people at a futures course in Bangkok is any indication. The course, ‘The futures of development: historical roots, present trends and alternative futures’, was held in Bangkok 23–30 August 1992 by the World Futures Studies Federation (WFSF), with sponsorship from UNESCO and the Communication Centre of the Queensland University of Technology, Australia.     

South Asia: Before and after

Ever since the two-pronged ‘divide and rule’ approach of the British and the ‘two nation’ theory of the communal forces led to the partition of the subcontinent, the elites of South Asian countries have always bifurcated the region's modern history with the independence divider. The contemporary period thus comprises of ‘before 1947’ when the British themselves ruled, and ‘after 1947’ when British ideas rule. Demystifying the all too familiar ‘before and after’ analysis of the elites and their pompous claims of post-independence ‘achievements’, this paper attempts to elude that scheme, exposing the emptiness of such claims. The author exhorts the poor of South Asia to put independence behind them as another major political event in the long history of the region and to press ahead with collective preparations for their common futures.     

Betraying a futurist: The misappropriation of Gandhi''s Ramarajya

Discussing how a political futurist may envision present-tainted ‘realist’ futures, ideology-oriented ‘ambitious’ futures, ethics-inspired ‘ideal’ futures, or other types of futures, this essay describes who an idealist-futurist is. Proving that Mahatma Gandhi is such an idealist-futurist who builds his futurism on the rock of humanistic values by relishing the good and rejecting the bad, emphasizes the futures for the weak, and insists on working for future through futureful means such as truth and non-violence, it is pointed out how Gandhi's futurism has come to be pilfered and betrayed by the brahmanical Hindu right-wing future-thieves in present-day India.     

Making rights from what’s left of Darwinism

The legal, political, and social meaning of the work of Charles Darwin has been claimed as resident to conservative and liberal homes alike. Peter Singer's unique admixture of personal liberal politics and what may look to be an extremely conservative philosophy of nature expose some over-simplicity in traditional ‘right’ and ‘left’ categories. In “Recovering the Left from Darwin in the 21st Century”, Steve Fuller provides us with insightful historical and sociological contexts for Singer's challenges. In this article, Kirk Junker takes one aspect of the trajectory ‘the notion of natural rights’ and examines their social construction, linguistic maintenance, and legal ramifications.     

The future of happiness

Following definitions of ‘happiness’ and ‘social development’, crossnational and temporal happiness trends are analysed to reveal whether reported happiness reflects changes in broader social conditions. The authors question whether an effective measurement of happiness can serve as an indicator of social development. In addition, the role of information in contributing to or maximizing happiness is analysed.     

A post-nationalist South Asia

The ideas of ‘nation’, ‘national security’ and ‘development’ have played havoc with South Asian cultures. The notion of ‘nation state’ has tended to reproduce aspirations of the majority people who are often reconstructed by alien categories and leads to the alienation of minority communities. Virtually all ethnic conflicts in South Asia have their roots in this idea. A more viable and desirable future for South Asia lies in rethinking the model of development and reinventing the notions of state and security.     

Q-analysis : A hard language for the soft sciences

The relevant data sets in a ‘soft’ science can be manipulated and analysed using topology, an exercise which also reveals the ‘backcloth’ which limits or modifies such interrelationships. The method is currently being used in many fields: eg industrial relations, medicine, and architecture. An example of a university's committee structure is used to show how the underlying, and often unnoticed, geometry can frustrate the aims of an organisation.     

Researching the future: method or madness?

This paper examines the methodological issues behind futures studies, questioning whether it is possible to claim a futures study as methodologically ‘sound’, and critiquing how futures methodology fits within the methodological paradigms currently recognised in the research field. The extent to which futures methodology can be considered a paradigm in its own right is also examined as are the assumptive foundations of futures studies. While all the evidence raises many questions as to the form of futures methodology, the lack of clarity does not make a futures study invalid or unreliable, and hence sensemaking from the chaos of futures ‘data’ does ensure that futures studies can be based on method rather than madness.

How does one research the future? The very notion of researching the future is a paradox. The word research lies within the time boundaries of the past and the present so to research the future appears a logical impossibility. Attempts to ground the methodology in any single paradigm or set of constructs proves a fruitless task. Indeed, it becomes apparent that when undertaking research into an area that is something new, in the future, which could constitute a new field of research, fundamentally a new methodology needs to be created. This paper discusses how the development of a futures methodology is an on-going process which cannot be bounded by the limitations of strict rigour, but is nevertheless a rigorously sound approach to carrying out research.

When researching the future, no one method is appropriate in isolation. While quantitative methods such as forecasting, extrapolation and time series may prove useful if there is raw numerical data to work with, a hypothesis cannot be tested and proven as is the case in many quantitative studies. Given the nature of ‘the future’ itself, raw quantitative analysis needs contextualising and interpreting in light of the assumptive future constructs, and the assumptions themselves need examining for ‘assumption drag’ so that underlying trends and wave patterns are accounted for [1].     

Futures beyond dystopia

The speculative imagination is an higher-order human capacity that can productively explore the not-here and the not-yet. To some extent it is already doing so. But these explorations are limited by prevailing cultural assumptions. The purpose of this paper is to suggest that there are other arenas to explore that, were they taken seriously, could exert sufficient symbolic ‘pull' to qualify as desirable images of futures. They could then begin to act as ‘magnets' for the realisation of possibilities that are presently obscured.     

It's only a paper moon

This article considers recent ‘end of history’ and ‘end of nature’ hypotheses in the context of new scientific and socioeconomic paradigms, and seeks a broader understanding of the nature of information society. Through a review of recent work on future socioeconomic and scientific and technological developments, the conservationist view is rejected in favour of ‘wise design and governance of evolution’. Planning and forecasting have a central role in this process.     

The future of art in postcultural democracy

Has the future of art fallen irredeemably into the grip of the ‘creative industries’ directed by a consortium of public and private cultural entrepreneurs? Is democracy the natural guardian of artistic independence? Or has the cultural policy agenda of neoliberal democracy solidified into a managerial instrumentalization of art geared to the functions of the market and the state? European Cultural Policies: 2015 provides a model introductory text for a discussion of these vital issues in near future forecast. The authors of the report are independent curators operating from dissident research groups whose aim is to challenge the dominant neoliberal model of cultural enterprise and offer viable alternatives to it. This paper examines the report's diagnosis of a symptomatic cultural predicament and its proposals for future recuperation.     

Alternative futures: AmI scenarios and Minority Report

In the last few decades, scenarios have provided a way of analysing the implications of alternative futures, especially as they might be impacted by new technologies. This has been no less true of ambient intelligence (AmI), which may be embedded everywhere in the not so distant future. Most of the scenarios developed by AmI enthusiasts have been rather ‘sunny’, showing how the new technologies promise to make our lives more efficient, enjoyable, productive, enriching. A European project, called Safeguards in a World of Ambient Intelligence (SWAMI), deliberately developed ‘dark scenarios’ to highlight the threats to privacy, identity, trust, security and inclusiveness posed by the new technologies. The SWAMI consortium also developed a methodological structure for deconstructing and analysing the dark scenarios. This paper takes that approach a step further by applying it to a cultural artefact, partly to test the validity, utility, applicability of the SWAMI methodology to a scenario not constructed by the consortium and partly to show how some cultural artefacts can be regarded as scenarios in their own right as well as warnings about future technologies. The cultural artefact chosen here was the Steven Spielberg film Minority Report, because it features so many AmI technologies and draws attention to the issues that have been the focus of the SWAMI project.     

New leaders shine light on shadow of denial

At first glance, I was quite sure that I wanted to take on Don Michael's 1991 Futures essay—‘Leadership's shadow: the dilemma of denial’. My initial glimpse suggested that he was advocating that we might ‘hope’ our problems away in the absence of any proven strategy for action. It was with this interpretation that I agreed to respond to an invitation to submit an essay for this colloquium as a reaction to his original article. However, after reading the article more carefully in preparation for writing my response, I was impressed with the foresight Michael demonstrated, given that he offered it for publication in late 1990 which meant he had written it some time earlier.     

Economics, equity and sustainable development

As a fashionable catchword, ‘sustainable development’ has provoked a large but nebulous literature. In the interests of communication and relevance it is necessary to narrow down the various definitions that have been given and show how a revised conception of sustainable development can be integrated into practical decisionmaking. This article suggests one approach. Sustainable development is categorized by economic change subject to ‘constancy of the natural capital stock’—the stock of environmental assets is held constant while the economy is allowed whatever social goals are deemed appropriate. Such a rule, which has its own difficulties, accommodates the main concerns of the advocates of sustainability—equity between generations, equity within a generation, economic resilience to external shocks, and uncertainty about the functions and values of natural environments in social systems. It may also accommodate some of the concerns of the ‘deep ecology’ movement by respecting rights in nature.     

Dissolving the stranglehold of the fix : A role for social construction in dealing with environmental dislocation

The current approach to environmental dislocation and innovation is characterized as ‘dualistic’. Dualism is described, implications worked through and the existence of another, ‘dialectical’ approach is proposed. A dialectical worldview, it is suggested, complements the strengths of dualism and extends our intellectual reach. Such a view encourages recognition of social and epistemological contexts of dualistic constructs and of the dislocations that arise when they are operationalized. It enables an extension of our involvement with the world from accountability to responsibility. Mundane examples are offered in which dialectical implications and social constructions are revealed, and shown to be an effective basis for resolving, or avoiding, dislocation.